


A single thing we couldn't do

by Petra



Series: To live without it [2]
Category: due South
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-19
Updated: 2008-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:41:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: "Don't worry about it" means "Don't ever mention it again."





	A single thing we couldn't do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teland/gifts).



> The problem with attempting to stop writing a story is that sometimes it doesn't work. Te encouraged me and Carla approved the draft.

"Damn it," Ray says, and pulls against Fraser's hand on his shoulder.

"It would be foolish for you to attempt any sort of work under these circumstances." Fraser frowns at him. "Particularly anything that requires you to go into a dangerous situation."

"So you're just going to go running in after a goddamn hostage and I'm supposed to sit here in my car you won't let me drive and take it?" Ray opens his car door wider. "That's not buddies."

Fraser glances into the back seat, where Dief is watching. Dief has been staying within petting distance of Ray at all times since his displacement, and now he puts his head on Ray's right shoulder. "You don't have any training."

Dief huffs his agreement with this in Ray's ear.

Ray folds his arms and glares at his knees, preparing to sulk. "But you don't have any backup without me. I'm s'posed to be your partner, right, even if I'm --" he shakes his head, then leans on Dief's muzzle. "I don't want to just watch you run into a building with somebody armed."

Fraser looks to Dief, who rolls his eyes unsympathetically. "All right," he says, and takes a deep breath, willing himself to calm down slightly. "I'll call the station. Technically, it's not my jurisdiction, after all."

There is no clear reason why Ray puts his head in his hands at this capitulation. "Somebody might die in there while you're waiting."

It is a sickeningly vertiginous relief to Fraser that Ray said this first. "Yes."

Ray reaches past him and points to the door. "Shut up and go." He pulls a mobile phone out of his pocket with the unease of someone who still can't believe it will work. "I got the number. Mister -- the lieutenant will know I'm not playing games."

No one dies while Fraser is arguing with the extremely well-armed man in the warehouse, and when he comes out again, holding the shaken black-haired boy of perhaps five whom the felon had kidnapped by the hand, Ray is waiting between Lieutenant Welsh and Diefenbaker. "Thank you, Constable," the lieutenant says. "Though technically you are not liaising at the present moment, I feel it is unlikely that anyone in the precinct will question your continuing support."

Fraser nods and turns to the child, dropping to one knee to address him. "This is Lieutenant Welsh. He will take you back to your parents."

The boy wipes his nose on the back of his hand and nods, his brown eyes wide. "Okay."

The lieutenant looks somewhat pained when Fraser detaches his hand from the child's and the boy clings immediately to Welsh's leg, but that is not a problem which Fraser has the energy to deal with at present.

Ray is far more pressing.

"Next time," he says, swinging into the passenger side of the car with a level of ease that discomfits Fraser, "you either leave me behind or take me in with you."

Fraser nods and remonstrates with himself for giving into habit and allowing Ray to accompany him in the first place. "You certainly would have been safer at home."

Ray scowls at him, presaging wrinkles that he will never acquire in those patterns; the Ray Fraser knows is prone to smile lines instead. "Damn it, don't just stick me in that apartment and run off. It's not home, and you know it."

"Ray --" Fraser rubs his eyebrow as if that will smooth his thoughts. The adrenaline that came with saving the child's life is wearing off and the stew of depraved possibilities that has been tormenting him for days is returning, one impossibly filthy mental image at a time. The only sentiment Fraser feels safe to express is, "I wouldn't hurt you for the world."

He's certain he'll never understand why this makes Ray twist in his seat and punch the chair back. "Fuck it, fuck it, never fucking mind," Ray says, his voice hoarse, as though this is any way to dissuade Fraser from inquiring.

"Ray." Fraser takes another deep breath and parks the car; he can't focus on driving, dealing with Ray's fury, and ignoring his own misplaced desires effectively. "What, precisely, would you like me not to mind?"

It is not a relief on any level when Ray grabs him by the shoulder, much as Fraser had gripped him earlier -- though Fraser had meant to restrain Ray, and Ray pulls him close, kissing with the same force he used on the seat. It is painful, harsh, not at all sweet, and the hurried, vicious clench of Ray's hand on his shoulder makes it all come into cruel focus.

When Fraser knows exactly what he is doing, he pushes Ray's hand off of his shoulder and pulls away. "Ray --"

Ray scrubs a hand over his face and lets his head hang in utter dejection. "Shit. Shit, I -- shouldn't've done that. Sorry, sorry, fucking sorry."

It is several moments too many before Fraser can control his breath enough to say, "No, you shouldn't. It's --" not all right, not in the least. "Don't worry about it."

Ray's pained yelp of laughter is all too familiar. "Means 'don't ever mention it again,' right?"

Fraser can feel his cheeks heat with a blush. He hopes that they are far enough from streetlights that Ray won't notice. "Yes."

"Fine," Ray says, in a voice too small to be his own.

But then, everything about Ray is not his own, not now.

"I'm going to drop you at your apartment and take Dief to the Consulate," Fraser says, keeping his voice steady by main force of will. He hasn't left Ray alone for a night since Ray was over thirty. "You have the number on your refrigerator."

"I didn't mean to --" Ray slumps in his seat. "Sorry. I didn't think you were -- I just --" He sighs. "Sorry."

Fraser swallows against a lump in his throat. "I forgive you, but I think -- we both need time alone." It is a lie, and he is not in the habit of lying to Ray, even now, but if he does not take time alone, he is not certain what mistakes he will make.

Ray makes a muffled noise of assent.

Fraser starts the car and pulls back into traffic, struck by how difficult it is to simultaneously attempt to forget something and memorize its every detail.

*

"I'm not a pedophile," Fraser says for the thousandth time.

The moment he says it, he realizes his error; it was meant to be a thought, and he has said it aloud. In Ray's hearing.

Ray's eyes are wide with some complex of emotions when he looks at Fraser. From the television, the Leafs fans cheer their pathetic team's equally pathetic effort. "You mean you're not my creepy uncle Ben?"

It is not Fraser's normal reaction to stress to close his eyes and pretend that the situation is not happening, but he is out of rational responses for the moment, so he gives it a try.

"No shit." Ray puts his hand on Fraser's shoulder, the first time he has reached out to him since that deliriously enticing kiss. "I'm not a kid, so -- no, you're really not."

The temptation to giggle wars with the urge to vomit. "No." Fraser swallows hard. "It would be rape, though, legally speaking."

He can feel Ray's shudder from his fingertips where they are still resting on Fraser's shoulder. "Legally, sure, but --" that snort is all too familiar. "You gonna count laws or the part where I want you so bad I can't make myself shut up about it?"

Fraser squeezes his eyes closed more tightly. "You're not -- I didn't -- I --" He cannot bring himself to tell this lonely, displaced boy he knows as well as his partner that he does not love him, that it is nothing to do with him.

If it were nothing at all to do with him, it would be easier to ignore. Possible to put off, in the same way that Fraser has consistently deferred his affections for Ray since they met.

"Who's it gonna hurt?" Ray asks, and -- that weight, that warmth is his thigh against Fraser's. "Not doing anything's hurting the hell outta me, and --" he laughs softly. "You gotta be thinking along the same lines or you wouldn't --" He puts his hand on Fraser's knee. "What the hell, Fraser? 'I'm not a pedophile'? I'm not a toddler -- and shit, but I have the worst damn crush on you."

It's not a word Ray ever uses for his affection for Stella, nor for any other woman. It approximates the difficulty Fraser has in taking his next breath, but even that pain does not negate the surge of desire. "I --" He licks his lips and opens his eyes, watches Ray watching him with the sense that one of them is about to bolt in some direction or other, and he can't tell which. "I'm not in love with you, in the strictest sense."

The way Ray's mouth hangs open at this spawns a new tide of terrible, beautiful images in his mind. "God, I --" he scrubs at his eyes with one hand. "'course you're not."

Fraser looks past him, practices the phrase in his head twice, and says, "Well, I am -- with your elder self."

"Jesus." Ray leans back, quelled momentarily by whatever blow this revelation has dealt him.

"I'm sorry." Fraser sighs. "I never meant to --"

"Say anything?" Ray punches him lightly on the arm. "You might be older than me, but damn, I hope I'm not that dumb when I'm as old as you."

Fraser covers his eyes with one hand, as cowardly a gesture as he can fathom. "Either you are, or you are not, at that age, interested in my affections in that way. Which makes my crimes --"

"They're not!" Ray says, shouts.

"-- all the more compounded." Fraser pinches the bridge of his nose. "I can't take things from you that you would not normally give me."

"I'm me right now." Ray puts his hand on Fraser's thigh, hot and strong. "And I want to, right now."

"Ray --" He means to say "Don't," possibly "Please don't," but Ray kisses him first.

Which makes it all the harder to say afterward, with a renewed knowledge of how warm and, god, willing Ray is.

The "please" is faint, the "don't" equally so, but he can and does say them both.

"Come on," Ray says, his voice a familiarly aggravating whine. "Why the hell not?"

Fraser puts his hand on Ray's chest to hold him at something approaching a safe distance. His heart is beating so fast it is nearly a matter of medical concern. "I told you."

"So it's technically illegal, but --" Ray shakes his head. "A, I'm not calling the damn cops on you because 2, you are one and you're not going to arrest yourself, and C, as soon as I'm home -- and the older me is back -- who's going to even know about it, and plus if they did who would care because nobody could prove it?"

"I believe I said 'No,' Ray." Fraser tells his pounding pulse and his entirely inconvenient, though not unexpected, erection that they are not the sum of his self, and that he will not betray Ray's -- the real Ray's -- trust twice over by --

He can't find a phrase that would suit. Cheating on him implies some form of bond beyond what they share; molesting him is entirely too present and impossibly twisted in time and tense.

"Just another kiss?" Ray asks. His tone is oddly like Diefenbaker's, wheedling for pastries. "One more. I'll keep my hands to myself --" he holds them up, then puts them behind his back, ludicrously. "Just --" he shrugs. "That's not against anybody's rules."

"Technically --"

"Technically please. You're killing me here." Ray unclasps his hands and smacks his own thighs. "I'll shut up. Forever, if I have to. I promise. Just --"

Fraser doesn't believe his promise any more than he believes himself when he says it will be just the one kiss. It is momentarily sufficient to let him kiss Ray, feel the vibration of his groan, and lose himself ever so briefly in the flicker of Ray's tongue against his.

When Fraser breaks the kiss to take a properly deep breath, Ray groans, so close Fraser can feel his breath.

"Best two out of three?" Ray asks, with a grin that for once puts his youthful features into a configuration where they are more highlighted than not.

Fraser stands, willing his shaky knees to hold him steady, and looks toward the door. "I gave you what you asked." His voice is hardly his own, rough and torn with lust. "I'm going. Now."

Ray looks stunned for one heartbreaking moment before he pulls himself to his feet. "Thought you said I shouldn't be alone all night at my age."

"You shouldn't be with me." Fraser backs toward the door.

"Yeah, I should." Ray glares at him with a jut of jaw that makes him look both precisely as Fraser remembers and impossibly young. "You gotta keep me safe from all the bad guys out there." He follows Fraser toward the door.

Fraser holds his hands up. "If I stay, I am one."

Ray doesn't even give him the courtesy of a disbelieving look. He laughs at Fraser and shakes his head. "No way, no, just shut up, okay?" He catches hold of Fraser's wrists. "Don't beat yourself up. Just -- please?"

The desperation in the last word makes Fraser's heart ache.

It is a sensation he knows extremely well, and one that makes it easier than it might otherwise be to twist his hands free of Ray's. "I'll ask another officer to look in on you tomorrow."

He's expecting Ray to do something violently physical -- punch him, grab him, punch the wall -- and he's ready for it.

Ray stares at him. "What -- no." His face is entirely little boy lost, and that makes Fraser confident that he has chosen the better path, even while it wrenches at him. "You're the only one who's got any time for me. Don't --" he slumps, staring at the floor. "Fuck, I'll shut up. Doesn't matter if I have to jerk off ten times a day, I won't say anything but 'Yeah, the pineapple is really good on that pizza' and 'Thanks.' Don't leave me all alone here."

"I've never known you to be good at being quiet about anything." Fraser turns toward the door, trying to pretend he hasn't seen Ray's hurt.

"I can, damn it. I --" Ray gets a handful of his jacket as Fraser opens the door. "Jesus, give me another chance. I won't do nothing you don't want to see, not at all."

Fraser tightens his hand on the doorknob until the pain in his knuckles drowns out the one in his chest. "You mean you won't do anything."

"Right, yeah." Ray lets his jacket go. "Not for the rest of the night. Or, you know, ever."

It's impossible to believe this, especially as it is the second time that Ray has promised it.

If Fraser leaves him alone, though, he will have no one to talk to who will know how to listen properly unless he calls the Lieutenant, who has been quite clear about leaving this particular problem for Fraser. "Half an hour," Fraser says, and lets go of the doorknob.

Ray's relief is heavily mitigated by his disappointment, but the latter serves to keep him entirely on his side of the couch with impeccable "please" and "thank you"s for the next half hour.

Watching him on his best behavior is reminiscent of a film Fraser has heard of but never seen; he wonders if Ray would know the reference to a pod person, and how he would react if he did. He doesn't comment on it, or on the fact that a new program is starting on the television, clearly marking the time, and that he's still sitting near Ray, using all of his willpower not to watch him.

The television is not anything like interesting enough to keep his attention, but the parade of self-recrimination in his mind is more than sufficient. If he hadn't, if he'd just, if he'd only, then Ray wouldn't have, and they wouldn't have, and everything would be all right, not tense and awful.

"Sometimes I even miss school," Ray says, and Fraser refocuses and finds that there are commercials showing. "I mean, how sad is that?"

He hadn't considered -- "I'm so sorry." Fraser runs his hand through his hair. "What subjects were you studying? We can't enroll you -- not easily -- but I'll visit the library tomorrow and find you supplemental materials."

"What?" Ray shakes his head. "No, it's okay, really. You don't have to."

Fraser presses his lips together and composes his answer before he speaks. "I won't let you neglect your education, Ray." He clears his throat -- as he had done when he thought the words through. "If you're going to be here indefinitely --"

"Trig," Ray says, and waves his hand. "And chemistry, and really godawful literature I don't even know what."

Fraser can't guess books were taught in his school at the time, but he suspects he can find something more to Ray's taste. The other two subjects should be simple enough to provide for. "All right." He stands.

"What, just like that?" Ray gets up. "You're fine, you're grooving along, and bam, I have to learn something right now so you have to go? Is the library even open right now?"

Fraser turns and checks Ray's kitchen clock. "No."

"Okay." Ray has his hands clenched into fists; he's standing as still as he seems capable of. "'night. See you tomorrow with a math book."

"Good night, Ray."

Before Fraser can do more than shift his weight, Ray sighs. It is the same world-weary, put-upon sound Diefenbaker makes when by some oversight he is not fed precisely at the right time. "Can I say I really, really want to hug you?"

Fraser's mouth goes dry at the thought of the feel of him. "The feeling is mutual."

As fast as that, Ray is furious again. "Then come on, be a good -- guardian or -- foster-something or whatever. I won't -- I won't kiss you. I just --" He spreads his arms.

Anyone with a sense of self-control would turn away from him at that point and deny him even such a small concession. Fraser finds that his strength has ebbed, and that he is stepping forward to take Ray in his arms without so much as a friendly pat on the back. "Good night," he says again.

Ray takes a shuddering breath. "You feel -- I --"

Which is more than enough warning to push him away.

Fraser doesn't. The only person who touches him, whose touch he welcomes, is Ray, and the absence of any overt affection has been making him homesick for someone who is nothing like his home.

"I should go," Fraser says, and continues to entirely fail to let Ray go.

"Yeah," Ray says, his breath warm on Fraser's neck.

"I should go now," he clarifies, orders himself. And he ignores himself in favor of the feel of Ray's shoulderblades under his hands.

"Yeah," Ray says again, and leans on him slightly. "You gonna?"

"Yes," Fraser says, and doesn't.

"Okay."

Fraser takes a deep breath and steels himself for the shock of cold that will come when he is no longer chest to chest with Ray, and doesn't feel it because somewhere in the exhale, he doesn't, in fact, let go. "I don't use snooze buttons," he tells Ray. "Never. The last time I lay in bed past when I normally get up, I'd been shot."

"You got shot?" Ray asks, tilting his head enough that he can look at Fraser. "Ow."

"Yes." Fraser dredges up the horror of that time and applies it directly to his rebellious libido like a bucket of ice water. "It was because I thought I was in love, and the person I was in love with was -- entirely the wrong person to love."

This has the counterproductive effect of getting Ray to squeeze him more tightly. "I'm sorry." He says, "Oh damn," and lets go -- finally, too soon. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"It was years ago." Fraser regrets his release as little as he can manage. "I seem to have something of a pattern in these matters."

Ray winces and looks at the floor. "What was wrong with him?"

Fraser laughs -- not at Ray, not at his choice of pronoun, but at the litany of wrongs he could lay at Victoria's door. "She was a murderer. Among other things."

"Oh." Ray frowns. "Okay, that's a massive downer."

"Yes." Fraser finally takes a step away from him. "It was."

"Damn. Was she your last girlfriend?"

The answer to that deserves a brief accounting of Fraser's thorough lack of sexual experience, but that might well put him closer to Ray's level in this matter, and he does not wish to be there. "Yes."

Ray whistles softly. "Hell of a rebound." He gives Fraser a crooked smile. "Okay, really -- I'll shut up about the horndog thing."

Fraser knows better on every level he's aware of than to ask for the hug he desperately wants. "Thank you kindly. I should get back to the Consulate."

"Okay." Ray gives him a wistful smile from two meters away. "Good night."

"Sleep well," Fraser says. "I'll bring your textbooks as soon as I have a chance."

Ray groans and rolls his eyes. "Oh, great. Thanks."

 

The expression is enough like the Ray Fraser knows that it makes him smile. "It will be good for you, Ray."

"Yeah, I know, I know. 'night."

*

"So," Ray says over the second page of derivatives, "what are you waiting for?"

Fraser looks from his equations to Ray. "I'm sorry?"

"You've gotta have better things to do than homeschool me. I've been here six damn months already, I bet the Lieutenant could get me in somewhere if you asked." Ray rubbed his eyes. "Except then I wouldn't see you, right?"

"Well, not as much," Fraser admits. He has taken a certain amount of joy in preparing the kind of lessons he knows Ray will absorb -- light on verbiage, heavy on practice.

"'kay." Ray reaches across the table and pats Fraser's hand. "I'm just saying, it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere. Might as well --"

There are too many ways to finish that sentence. Fraser looks from Ray's hand to his face. "Might as well what, exactly?"

Ray sighs. "Everything. Nothing. I don't know. Get me papers so I can get an education you don't have to write yourself. A job, even, so you don't have to --"

"The money is your -- older self's -- savings." And contributions from Lieutenant Welsh and a not inconsiderable amount from Fraser, but there is no reason to go into the minutiae.

"And maybe, just maybe, can we talk about that kissing thing again, because it was going pretty well and I haven't had a date in six months." Ray sets his pencil down and gives Fraser a hopeful look. "And I'm getting pretty damn good at calculus."

The self-defense mechanisms Fraser has exercised at length propose "After you've finished an essay on Faulkner" as the local equivalent to a cambric shirt with no stitching.

He doesn't say it aloud; if he did, he would deserve Ray's ire. "You're not significantly older than you were before."

Ray snorts. "Yes, I am. And sure, you're older, but -- damn it, you still want me, right?"

Fraser is certain in some guilty parts of his mind that he has been doing less than he could to support Ray's progress toward someday becoming a detective in part because he needs some sense of privacy around him. "Occasionally," he allows.

Ray smiles and shakes his head. "Occasionally, like about as often as I want you, huh?"

It is a thought Fraser has chased from his head every time it recurs, no less fervently for his knowledge of its truth. He feels his cheeks heat with embarrassment. "Possibly."

"Well, I occasionally think about you naked like I occasionally fucking breathe." Ray is flushed, too, perhaps from the bluntness of his own speech. "And it's not getting any better, the longer you pretend it's going to."

Fraser finds it safer to contemplate the tabletop than to look at Ray. "Understood." His mind is racing to get ahead of itself, desire and restraint not nearly as neck and neck as they ought to be. "That's -- not going to make studying any easier."

Ray bangs his hand on the table. "Are you even listening to me?"

"I'm trying not to," Fraser admits. "For your own good. And mine."

"My own good." Ray shoves his chair back with a horrible scrape and comes around the table. "You know what would do me a hell of a lot of good right now?"

"Self-restraint," Fraser says, and knows the weakness in his voice for what it is.

"Fuck self-restraint. Fuck what somebody who's not me and not you thinks is good for me." Ray kisses him, and it is sweeter than it was months ago, as if all of the waiting has made it less dangerous and easier to believe in.

Fraser feels himself shake in a way that would be embarrassing with anyone else. He should say "Don't." He should mean "Don't," whatever he says, but all he says is, "Ray," and he stands, too close for anything but an embrace, tight and fierce, everything he's been fighting not to want.

"Yes, finally," Ray says, and hugs him back just as tightly, his hands settling on Fraser's waist as he leans in for another kiss.

The misplaced decorum of the gesture -- when he can feel Ray breathing, his erection pressing against Fraser's hip -- is enough to make him laugh. "God. I -- this is ridiculous."

"Feels good, though." Ray kisses him again and pulls him closer, grinding, and groans against his mouth. "Really -- good."

It seems perfectly natural, as though this is what genitals are meant for, why arms and legs are the length they are and bend in the ways they should. "Probably -- should get undressed. Soon."

Ray kisses him harder, then pushes him away, gasping for breath.

Fraser stops breathing in sympathy and no small measure of fear -- if he's done something wrong, no amount of apologies can fix matters -- until Ray reaches for his own belt.

"Yeah. Naked." Ray's grin tugs at the same places in Fraser's heart that it always has. "Sounds like a damn good plan."

It sounds final and frightening, but fraught with different peril than leaving pants -- particularly -- on. Nakedness leaves nowhere to hide, but if he touches Ray again, or worse, Ray touches him, there will be consequences.

The process of removing clothing is much more complicated when there are two people working at it, and Fraser is briefly, guiltily glad he is not wearing a uniform. Ray's hands on the zipper of his jeans are more than enough to make him need to shut his eyes and reach for control. Ray's hands on the buttons of his tunic -- even the image makes him wince with the sheer force of it.

Yet another thing he has spent considerable time in refusing to consider.

"You okay?" Ray asks, his voice husky.

"Yes." Fraser pulls his jeans off and kicks them aside with great and deliberate force before he kisses Ray. In for a penny, in for a pound, and he has one hand on Ray's cheek, soft and gentle, and the other on his hip, pulling him close enough to lean against, naked and terrifyingly real.

"Oh fuck," Ray says, pushing against him with a force and desperation that make Fraser stop fighting for control -- if Ray has none, he needs none.

All he needs is this, in this moment: Ray's mouth on his, Ray moving against him and clutching at him, saying his name and nonsense in breathless gasps, coming and shaking with it. "Oh, Ray," Fraser says.

Ray opens his eyes -- and Fraser remembers how young he is, how innocent, and does not let himself curse, because Ray is smiling at him, beaming, dazed and joyous. "Sorry," he says, lightly. "Told you I was kind of -- looking forward to this."

"Don't be sorry." The instruction is as much for Fraser as for Ray. "Not for anything." Fraser kisses him again and stops himself from putting names to any of this. The only thing he will let matter is that it is what they both want, that when Ray reaches between them and squeezes Fraser's erection it makes him shout with the most overwhelming feeling other than guilt he has felt in a very long time. He doesn't, can't possibly withstand the pleasure, and there is no one here who needs him to try. He shakes with it and lets it take his thoughts away as long as they will go.

When he opens his eyes, they are still in the kitchen. Ray is wearing a t-shirt, a smug expression, and a certain amount of semen. "Thank you," Fraser says.

"For what?" Ray kisses him again, as though they have not just completed some level of intimacy, or as if he means to begin again.

"This." Fraser shrugs slightly. "Being persistent."

"Like I can stop doing that." Ray laughs and pats his shoulder. "Kinda gross."

It's increasingly clammy, at least. "In its own way. What would you like to do about it?"

Ray blinks at him with an expression Fraser has seen before when he's deferred to Ray. It's the one that says that Fraser is the adult in the immediate vicinity, and it's his call. "Take a shower, I guess."

"Together?" Fraser asks, as much because he wants to as because he wants to startle the expression off of Ray's face.

He grins. "Sure."

*

The Consulate's telephone rings at six-oh-four in the morning some time later. "Fraser?" Ray says, and Fraser nearly drops the phone.

"You're back."

"Holy fucking shit, that was weird." Ray lets out a yell that starts low and ends gravelly. "I -- do you even -- what the hell?"

"My best theory -- based on the data available -- was that you suffered a temporal displacement. From our perspective, you were replaced by your fifteen year old self."

Ray snorts. "I bet that was a picnic."

"No, not exactly." Fraser clears his throat. "It's good to hear your -- real -- voice again."

"Yeah, you too, buddy. You got coffee in Canada yet today?"

"We will by the time you get here -- oh." Fraser can feel himself blush. "I'll have to come pick you up."

"You --" Ray splutters. "You've got my car?"

It helps, if only on a psychological level, to straighten his spine. "It was preferable to leaving it in the custody of your younger self. I'll be there in a few minutes." He grabs a pair of pants. "I suspect we have a great deal to discuss." He hasn't decided what details of the experience he will share with Ray, particularly on the emotional level. It's quite clear that Ray has previously had no memory of the incident, and if he has paradoxically acquired one, there may be very little discussion -- but Fraser does not let himself hope for that simple a resolution. To do so would leave him open to immense disappointment.

"Yeah." Ray blows out his breath, creating static in the phone. "Hell yes. See you in a few."


End file.
